4 ways your dinner will look different in 2025

Today's dinner menu: Termite tacos sprinkled with
algae, and a seaweed side salad. For dessert: banana bread
made with cricket flour.

This is what our meals in 2025 could look like, according to
a new
report from Wrap, the UK government's agency that
combats food waste.

Agriculture in is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse
emissions, with half of these emissions coming from
livestock. These meat and dairy alternatives could be a big
help in combating that pollution.

Fried insects take center stage.

Critters like grasshoppers and crickets are efficient sources of
protein. You can eat up to 80% of an insect's body, compared
to 55% for a chicken and 40% for a cow. Insects also emit 80
times less methane (a
greenhouse gas that has 25 times more impact on global
warming than carbon dioxide) than livestock.

If you still can't
get over the "ew" factor, consider insects' nutritional value.
Caterpillars actually contain 1 gram
more of protein per serving than lean ground beef.

The taste isn't
necessarily bad. Like most fried foods, fried crickets and
caterpillars tend to taste more like the oil you cook them
in. Actress and UN Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie
told New York Magazine that her kids "eat
crickets like Doritos" since they "taste just like potato
chips." Another brave
reviewer from io9 tried fried caterpillars, and said they
have a "wonderful, crunchy texture."

Locusts
and worms, cooked with olive oil.REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Microalgae could be used as a dairy supplement.

If bugs don't sound appetizing, Wrap says microalgae, which
is rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, is also in our
future. A health foods
company called "Nature's Way"
sells algae capsules to take with breakfast, lunch, and
dinner.

Microalgae can also be used to
replace ingredients in foods. A California-based company
called Solazyme, for example, created a line of dairy, egg,
and oil substitutes using microalgae.

Fermented fungi replaces
meat.

Another alternative that
potentially has a wider appeal is mycoprotein,
which is just a fancy word for fermented fungi.

Mycoprotein is already available in some frozen food
aisles, under the name Quorn
Foods. Founded in 1985, Quorn currently produces around
22,000 tons of 91 different mycoprotein products per
year. The company sells items like slices
of fake chorizo, hot and spicy burgers, BBQ chicken bites,
and even pepperoni pizza.

The demand for Quorn's
products is up 30% this year in the US, Wrap reports.

The FDA approved
mycoprotein over a decade ago, but skeptics still worry it causes
allergic reactions, the Washington Post
reports.

Quorn
fillets.Wikipedia
Commons

Fake and lab-grown "meat" also take on meat.

Out of all the alternatives, synthetic meat, whether it's
made from plants or in a lab, may taste the closest to the real
thing.

The faux meat startup Beyond Meat is already
experimenting with soy-based "chicken" strips and taco-style
ground "beef." Another company, Impossible Foods, announced that
it will release a 100% plant-based cheeseburger to
the public by 2016. These "meats" require only 1% of the land and 55%
of the energy needed to farm beef.

Other food scientists
are growing meat in petri dishes.

The world's first
lab-grown beef burger.Reuters/David
Parry

In 2013, a professor from Maastricht University in the
Netherlands created a five-ounce hamburger patty from billions of
lab-grown cells. Several food critics tried it, with one from the
BBC concluding
"this is meat to me; it's not falling apart."

Wrap's report says large-scale production of
lab-grown ground beef, pork, and sausage may be feasible within
the next five to 10 years.